LUCA

Careless, that’s what he was. He had never been that careless before. He’d chosen his Johns carefully, always able to keep control. No pay, no lay. And only in the best hotels. No quick trips into the bushes at Golden Gate Park.

Since he returned to San Francisco he was off-kilter, disastrously off guard. That was how it happened; he let his guard down. For months he’d lived on what little cash he had saved. His money was almost gone, the credit cards maxed out or cancelled. He was down to pocket change. He could have asked Martin for money, should have. He wasn’t thinking straight when he left New York. All he wanted to do was get out of there, fast.

Everyone he knew was wary, scared to death they’d be the next one to get sick, but he needed to make some money, a couple hundred to tide him over for the weekend. He picked the guy up outside the Palladium. They came to terms: three Cs, one hour, the John’s hotel if it was decent (it was), payment up front, no bondage, no whips, no fisting, cash only.

He was taken by surprise when the John started to get rough. He insisted he couldn’t get off if Luca wore a condom. Luca tried to back out of the deal. The guy was big, bigger still naked. A lifter, Luca remembered thinking when he did a striptease out of his shirt and tie, revealing a muscular chest. There was no way Luca was going to stick his dick up that ass unless it was covered with something the strength of a shower curtain.

He tried to reason with him, told him how he’d spent the last three weeks sitting at a deathbed, about the smell, the screaming, the pain. He’d never felt so vulnerable. He cried, something he’d never done before, not even when he was a kid. Still, the John, a conventioneer from Texas, or Kansas, or somewhere like that, wouldn’t back down. When the asshole lunged for him, Luca hit him with a brass lamp he lifted off one of the bedside tables, cleaned out his wallet, dressed, and left him lying unconscious, or dead—he didn’t know which—spread-eagled, bare-assed on the bed.

That night he wandered around the city, afraid to go back to his apartment, but he had no other choice. It was on a quiet street in Cow Hollow, close to Doige’s where he had eaten so many late morning breakfasts. Haze had never been there; he’d just paid for it. The apartment was in an old building, only four stories. Tall steel-framed windows looked out at the bridge. Luca had furnished it with bright colors and soft upholstered furniture. It was the first and only place where he really felt at home. When he was growing up in his mother’s house in Rialto, he always felt like he was on loan, like he had been born into the wrong family.

When Margaret died he didn’t go down for the funeral. Neighbors cleaned out the house. He told them to take the furniture. They boxed up some stuff and sent it to him. Three cardboard cartons—that’s all there was left. They were still in his bedroom closet unopened. He pulled one out and slit the tape. His old Boy Scout uniforms were neatly folded on top of stacks of his old school papers and awards. The merit badges affixed to the sash looked as new as the day his mother sewed them on. At the bottom of the box he found two scrapbooks. One was filled with newspaper clippings and souvenirs from his time in high school: his sports stats, scouting news. The boutonnieres he wore to his junior and senior proms were pressed between the pages. The other scrapbook hit him like a punch in the gut. It was an homage to Randy. His mother had clipped news items about his promotions at the bank. There were notes he’d written praising Luca for this and that. There were even birthday cards, from Randy, dated as recently as the month before she died three years earlier. Luca felt sick. He shoved the box back into the closet and reached for the phone. He hadn’t paid the bill in all the months he was in New York. It had been disconnected. He grabbed a jacket and left the apartment.

It was raining; not a gentle rain, a downpour. The city was like that: sunshine one minute, a monsoon the next. It never lasted long. His cheek smarted when the water pelted an angry welt where the asshole John had scratched him.

He ducked into a doorway. Someone had painted a primitive landscape all over the clapboards, the ceiling, even the door. Blue skies and billowing clouds hung over lush green fields dotted with sheep and cows. Standing off to one side was a shepherd holding a wooden staff. A closer look and Luca saw it for what it was: an enormous erect penis.

“Only in San Francisco,” he muttered.

Across the street the gas station was dark except for a light over the pay phone. Luca checked his watch: 3 a.m. It would be morning in New York City. He left the shelter of the doorway, crossed the street, and called Martin.